


Secrets & Lies

by Lacquiparle



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Denial of Feelings, Drunken Confessions, Drunken Kissing, F/M, Feelings, it's that scene in battlestar galactica but broadchurch style
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:35:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lacquiparle/pseuds/Lacquiparle
Summary: Hardy and Miller commemorate the end of Danny's case in their own way.
Relationships: Alec Hardy/Ellie Miller
Comments: 4
Kudos: 39





	Secrets & Lies

**Author's Note:**

> If you’ve seen _Battlestar Galactica_ and shipped Roslin and Adama, you don’t just know this scene (from S3), this scene gave you life eternal.

Hardy eddied the amber whiskey around his glass, his other hand shoved deep down into his pockets as though at that moment his fingers were searching for something. 

The Dorset sun was setting, his lips contacting the rim of the glass as he looked out over the horizon. It was bright still, but he didn’t mind. He swallowed and exhaled a low, steady breath. 

They agreed to meet here. A last hurrah to a case that nearly severed a community and cracked the detectives both open. He could see the disjointed ruptures now. All of their secrets penetrated. 

When he turned, a gust of wind whipping at his hair and blazer, she was walking toward him, a wisp of a grin at her mouth. She was wearing a blossom red dress that the sea air caught and spun about her legs. A basket in her hand. 

Hardy’s eyes widened and he whispered an incoherence to himself before he lowered his eyes and toed the sand. Better she not know. 

“Started without me?” she asked, squinting and smiling at him. 

He laughed and sipped his whiskey again. “Aye. You would have, too.” 

That much was true. Danny’s commemorative was going to start soon, and they agreed to get blistering drunk together. The two pariahs ostracized. 

“Maybe I already am?” 

She allowed him a peek into the basket where one of the wine bottles was already half empty. 

“Oh, you are naughty.” 

She placed the basket on the sand, taking the half empty wine bottle out and pulling the cork out. She didn’t bother with a glass. Just drank it straight from the bottle. 

Hardy gawked. 

“What?” Miller asked, wiping her stained mouth on her sleeve. Her blemished lips mirrored the color of her dress and Hardy felt his brain go faint.

“You show up in this,” he gestured to her dress, “and now _this_.” He pointed to the wine. 

Miller rapidly blinked at him and then snorted, her nostrils protruding slightly. “What do you think?” There was suddenly a loud disturbance several meters away, and both Hardy and Miller glanced over their shoulders toward the throng of grieving people. “It’s going to start soon.” 

Hardy reached to touch Miller’s arm or her shoulder or another part of limb to signal his compassion toward her, but she jerked away. “We just agreed to drink together and then, you know, go our separate ways.” 

“Right.” Hardy paused and reached for the whiskey Miller brought. “You didn’t answer me. What is all this?” 

Miller shrugged. “All these years, I had this image in my head of what Broadchurch is.” She grimaced and sighed, her body distorting as she tried to process her thoughts. “ _Was_.” She was never good at hiding her emotions. “Life’s just… it’s a fucking bitch. We just live our silly lives and then we die.” She shrugged her shoulders in defeat. “Any one of us could die tomorrow.”

Hardy stepped closer to her and this time she didn’t move away. He reached out, hesitated, and then let his hand capsize to his side, uncertain of what to say. “Ellie.”

“It’s strange to hear you say my name.”

Hardy chuckled. “Life isn’t all that bad.”

Ellie chortled. “Coming from you? The man who hates everyone and everything?”

“That’s not true!”

Miller glared at him in defiance. 

“There are some things I don’t hate. Like my daughter.” 

Miller returned his remark with a smile of her own, and then abruptly downed the rest of her wine. There were more sounds from Danny’s vigil, and as the vista broadened, lights from the wake etched the growing darkness in the distance. Miller turned to watch, but Hardy refrained, turning his attention toward Miller instead. 

“Let’s play a game.” Miller suddenly suggested, grabbing more bottles of alcohol from the basket and displaying them before Hardy like significant artefacts. 

“Like what?” 

“Truth and lies.” Miller then explained that the goal of the game was to guess facts about each other. If they guessed that the fact was, indeed, a lie, the other had to drink. If it was a truth, the person asking had to drink. “We’ll get proper drunk.” 

Hardy ran his hand over his face and grumbled. “Fine.” 

“Good. I’ll start. You had to come to Broadchurch.” 

“Truth.” Hardy took a swig of the vodka Miller handed him. “You wanted your children more than Joe did.”

“Truth.” Miller took a swig. The game continued until both were stumbling over their feet, Hardy’s blazer was buried somewhere in the sand, and Miller was on her knees and faltering over her words. She sloshed the liquor in her glass. 

“N-o mo’,” he hiccupped.

“Here,” she tried to force a fizzy drink down Hardy’s throat in some absurd attempt to hydrate him, which he promptly choked on. “I’s water.”

Hardy tried to focus on Miller’s face. “Wha’? No.” He shoved it aside. 

“Yea, drink i’. Is good for you. Water.” 

“Ellie.” They promptly tumbled over, Hardy’s arm barely grasping Miller’s waist. He took Miller with him, laughing jubilantly with intoxication as they investigated their faces, rosy with alcohol. “We need t’ sober up, lass.” His Scottish brogue came out keenly as he became drunker. 

“Hm, maybe.” She moved off Hardy and sat up, leaning precariously on her heels. “Are y’ in love w’ anyone?”

“Truth, but…” he grabbed the drink from her hand and tossed it aside, attempting to reach for her. “No m’.” He leaned forward, trying to balance on his hands. 

“Is it…” Miller covered her mouth and began to laugh, “Jenki… Jenk… Jenky…” Tears started to roll down her cheeks as she couldn’t contain her laughter anymore. 

“No!” 

“Oh, c’mon, Hardy, I’ve seen ya’, lookin’ at her.” She scrunched up her face and mimicked his brooding glance. “Who is ‘t? Tell me.” She swallowed, focusing her gaze on his.

Hardy leaned forward further, deliberately pressing his lips against hers. When he pulled away, they exhaled intensely at the same time. 

“You’re not telling me.” 

Hardy’s head fell onto Miller’s shoulder. He glanced up and squinted at Miller’s drunken expression. Astoundingly, she was smiling at him. 

“I love you, Miller.” He blurted out. 

“I know,” she responded, seemingly more sober now. 

“Ya do?” 

She leaned forward and placed her hand on his knee, kissing him back. “Of all the arseholes in the world,” she whispered against his mouth.

In the morning, unlit beacons lined the beach in honor of Danny’s memory, a gloomy, painful commemoration.

Hardy rolled over, cupping and massaging his shoulder from a difficult night sleeping under his blazer on the rutted sand. To his left, he glanced over and saw a familiar form laying within proximity to exude body heat. Around them, liquor bottles in various stages of emptying adorned the area. 

“Miller,” he murmured more out of habit than to wake her. 

She glanced over her shoulder at him, a hangover clinging to her face. 

“What happened?” Hardy asked, pulling himself up to a sitting position, which he immediately regretted. 

Miller didn’t instantly respond, instead covered her face with her hands and groaned out of malcontent. 

“I don’t remember much. Something about…”

Coming from under the concave of her hands, Miller told him to shut up. When she did finally roll over, her hands still protecting the turbulence in her head, she helped him trace their recollections of the frivolity from the previous night. Except the subsequent kiss and whatever happened after that. 

“Are you leaving then?” her voice drove through the waves rolling upon the shore. 

“Yeah.” He nodded. “I suppose him.” 

She was still clumsy, perhaps still drunk and reeling from the night before, but she pulled herself up to a sitting position. Sand clung to her dress and hair and skin. 

Hardy reached over, tantalizingly close, and touched for her hair. He leisurely dragged his fingers through the short curls that budded around her ear, sighing. Her eyes questioned him. 

“What?” 

“Nothing.” 


End file.
